Issue 168: State Of The Wishlist
10 watches that have taken up permanent residence in my head.
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that aims to explain and gently tease the watch world. A few weeks ago I bemoaned the lack of controversy or stupidity in the industry right now; someone must have been paying attention because a really large number of people at Swatch somehow signed off on an ad campaign image that’s hugely offensive to anybody with East Asian heritage. Sometimes media outlets are guilty of taking four or five social media posts out of a world of millions and turning that into ‘mass outrage’, but in this case I think we can all see that this was a monumental error on Swatch’s part. A boycott of Swatch Group products might feel unlikely - most internet storms are over in a few days and people who want an Omega are still going to buy one - but the ineptitude that allowed such an unforced error, during the most prolonged downturn in Chinese demand for luxury watches, is off the scale. The PR damage is done: a watch company rarely makes the front page of the BBC news app, or the Times website1.
For anyone not familiar with how such things get made, I worked on campaign shoots at Mr Porter and I would suggest that there are, conservatively, a dozen, maybe 20 people who would have had some level of involvement in the shoot and could have said something, and around a dozen more at managerial level who would have seen it and okayed it going out into the world. Many of them might have felt unable or unwilling to speak up; the people on set will include the likes of junior stylists or freelance producers, and they might not have felt able to express their concerns - although they should. But the rest of them, including the photographer, who although probably also a freelancer usually has a lot of say over what gets shot, but particularly whoever at Swatch was responsible for the creative direction and every level of sign-off from there upwards should have realised this wasn’t ok. In my experience, these shoots are sweated over for weeks before and after; there’s usually quite a precise mood board and shot-by-shot plan signed off beforehand and multiple rounds of edits and approvals afterwards. They’re often high-pressure environments where things are rushed, and there’s a huge financial penalty for having to go back and re-shoot a campaign, but I’ve seen it done for far smaller mistakes (and for far less justifiable whims of management, but that’s another story). If any or all of these people actually did speak up and were overruled, it speaks to a dictatorial environment; to adapt an old favourite, they were either careless or callous, and either way it could cost them dearly.
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
State of the wish list
So what is this? You’ll probably be familiar with social posts or blogs that follow the ‘state of the collection’ format - a run through of one’s watches, intended to showcase the owner’s great taste. This is similar, in its basic level of vanity, but rather than take you through the watches I own2, I wanted to focus on the watches I can’t get out of my head. And hey, it’s my birthday next week, so who knows, maybe there’s an ulterior motive at work.
These are realistic purchases, not objects of desire that I know I’ll never have. I’ve been asked about grails before, and I could spend hours writing about the many, many watches I’d buy if my lottery numbers came up. This is a different exercise, a walk through watches that are actively competing - though they don’t know it - to be my next purchase.
On that note, I will say that one of the reasons I haven’t bought any of these watches is that I’m acutely aware of the Trap Of Relative Affordability, a nonsense term I just made up that nonetheless describes a very real phenomenon. You have your eye on a real forever watch - in my case, it’s one of the watches on my list: the Zenith Chronomaster Original - but the price keeps getting further out of reach, like the proverbial mountain peak. You get to a point where you’ve got a few thousand available, earmarked for something mundane like ‘taxes’ or ‘nursery fees’, and you think okay, I can afford some fun watches. But if you buy one, you’re back to zero and that forever watch just jumped up another 10 per cent. I find myself clicking around for watches I can buy now instead of having the patience to wait, because, well, I want a new watch to satisfy that little dopamine hit of self-congratulation. Right now my resolve is strong, and writing this newsletter might be an exercise in dispelling some of those desires - I think in the course of telling you about them, I might realise I don’t really want some of them as badly as I imagined3. So let’s see how this little therapy session plays out.
Sherpa Ultradive
I like dive watches; you’re going to get that from this list, as you would from a State Of The Collection, and I’ve had the Sherpa Ultradive in my thoughts since meeting the man behind the brand, Martin Klocke4, at WatchPro Salon a couple of years ago. This ticks a lot of boxes for me: diver, solidly built, design that’s retro but not slavishly so, and a touch of orange. I like that it’s independent and I have a soft spot for inner rotating bezels, but at €6,400 it’s a bit steep, even though I’m all for supporting young brands.
Chance of actually purchasing: 3/10. An infatuation that I suspect will pass in time.
Tudor Pelagos FXD or Tudor Black Bay Pro
I own one Tudor already - the original BB Harrods - and I am frequently drawn to the idea of adding another. I found the FXD GMT compelling when I reviewed it; if anything, the problem is deciding which Tudor would be the right one. At the moment, a long-standing desire for a base-spec FXD in blue is being overtaken by a yearning for the BB Pro with its new white opaline dial, which would plug a GMT-shaped gap in the collection.
Chance of actually purchasing: 7/10. I can’t see my Tudor story having only one chapter.
Rado Captain Cook
For some reason 2025 has been the year I came back to Rado after a long time spent completely ignoring the brand. It started with the wild Tej Chauhan collab that I can’t shut up about (and would also definitely consider buying) and has continued with this Captain Cook that was recently - and quietly - launched. It’s 39mm, hitting a sweet spot between existing 41mm and 37mm versions, has a good looking gradient dial and a modern take on a beads-of-rice bracelet. It’s £2,200, which isn’t bad - but I suspect they’ll be available for less in six months.
Chance of actually purchasing: 4/10. I have enough lower-tier Swatch Group watches already, but this has definitely made the CC make sense in my head.
Baltic Hermetique
Another watch I reviewed and loved. I’ve since met Baltic founder Etienne Malec, and that’s increased the chance of purchase yet again. It’s affordable enough that I could just buy it; I haven’t because I’m trying something called ‘self-restraint’5, but it will only last so long. I missed the fragmented-dial models that came out last year; the summer colours were a bit too much for me, but one of these days they’re going to launch something with my name on it and I’ll be ready.
Chance of actually purchasing: 9/10. It’s a question of when, not if.
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